by Alison Wong
For the first time Terry asked questions. WAs Joe Kum-yung taller than Duck? How tall was Duck, how many English feet were there in five Chinese feet . . .
Donald smiled. Confound the bugger with irrelevant questions.
Dr Ewart gave evidence that death was caused by injury to the brain from the bullet wound.
Then Ngan Ping of Molesworth Street swore on the Bible and spoke without an interpreter. One Friday night Terry had come into Number 5 Haining Street where Ping and others were playing cards.
‘You were gambling,’ Terry said.
Yes. Undermine his credibility – that of every Chinaman – by revealing his criminal nature.
‘No gambling,’ the Chink said. ‘Only Chinese cash. Cannot spend it here,’
‘Are you a Christian?’ Terry asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You believe the Bible is better than your own religion?’
Ha! As Terry continued to interrogate, he reminded Donald of a boy pulling off the wings, then the legs of a fly.
Now Constable Young and Inspector Ellison stated that Terry had come into the station and given up his revolver. He’d shot a Chinaman to call attention to the evil of alien immigration. He’d signed a written statement.
Damn.
Horace Clare Waterfield, Private Secretary to His Excellency the Governor, produced the letter which His Excellency had received through the post the morning after Joe Kum-yung was shot. The letter, signed ‘Lionel Terry, British subject’, stated that to protect the rights of Britons against alien immigration he had ‘deemed it necessary to put a Chinaman to death’ that evening in the Chinese quarter known as Haining Street.
Oh damn.
Terry cross-examined Dr Martin as to the nature of the wound, and the Crown closed its case.
Terry declined to call evidence. He had nothing to give except a short statement.
Donald leaned forward in his seat.
Terry pulled out a thick pile of papers and addressed the jury. He objected to His Majesty being placed in the position of protector of unnaturalised race aliens, he said. He was surprised at the number of Asiatic witnesses and officials. Evidently the vast difference between European and Asiatic veracity had yet to be realised. The evidence given by the Chinese witnesses, especially that of Ngan Ping, the Christian, was distinctly Asiatic in quality, and he suspected the Chinese interpreter of being more shrewd than honest. Although in any other case he would decline to reply to a charge in which so many aliens were concerned – he glanced at Donald – he had brought this charge against himself for the purpose of protesting against this very evil.
Not entirely unreasonable.
Terry denied emphatically that he was the victim of an insane delusion or that his intellect had been impaired by sunstroke or any other ailment.
No.
Donald stared at Terry. Of course he agreed with Terry about the Chinese, but this was a capital charge. Surely it would be easier to excuse his action if there were some underlying condition. Something as innocent as sunstroke.
Terry continued with a long explanation of his position. The New Zealand Government needed to ship its aliens to other shores, so that it would be a country fit for white settlement . . . Upwards of 100,000 people were dependent upon the Asiatic alien for staple food products . . . The enemy was tampering with the food supplies, polluting the source from which the country derived its strength . . .
Donald tried to concentrate. He’d always enjoyed Terry’s speeches, but this time his mind started to drift. Terry’s short statement was full of polysyllabic words and contorted legal statements. It was too long.
‘I did murder one Chinaman, presumably Joe Kum-yung,’ Terry was saying, ‘but the murder was committed to test the law relating to the protection of aliens . . .’
Donald examined the Chief Justice’s face. How would he interpret this? At least, as a fellow member of the Anti-Chinese League, His Honour hated the Chinese too.
‘As it is naturally impossible for people of two distinct races to possess the same characteristics, therefore it is equally impossible for the laws of the people of one race to govern those of another.’
Well, well, well . . . Donald stabbed his pad with his pencil.
‘As the laws representing one race cannot be applied to people of another race, therefore it is unlawful for people of two or more distinct races to dwell together in the same country.’
Mmmmm . . .
‘Therefore, there cannot be a law according protection to or in any way recognising the presence of unnaturalised race aliens in British possessions.
‘In reply to the charge that I killed this alien,’ Terry paused, looked at Donald, the jury, ‘the Chinaman, being a race alien, is not a man within the meaning of the statute.’
Donald closed his eyes. Opened them again. There were few men he’d met who could match Terry’s charisma or indeed his powers of rhetoric. Of course he agreed that decisive action was required. But the audacity of the man!
As the Chief Justice summed up, Donald gripped his pencil. The law applied to every human being in New Zealand, His Honour said. There was no answer to the charge.
God! Here was the Chief Justice, fellow hater of the Asiatic element, having to protect Chinamen!
The only possible question, His Honour said, was whether the prisoner knew the nature of his act and was responsible for his actions. Donald’s knuckles, his fingers, turned white. There was no evidence of mental aberration, the Chief Justice continued, and the prisoner himself plainly contradicted it. He paused, surveyed the courtroom. Therefore, it was the duty of the jury to find the prisoner guilty.
Donald wanted to jump up and shout, ‘This is an honourable man. You know that, Your Honour. You agree with his position. I’ve seen you at the meetings . . . He’s a Briton. A gentleman . . . Perhaps a little misguided . . .’ Why the devil had Terry denied any mental incapacity? Surely it could have been sunstroke? Why did he refuse counsel?
Terry caught Donald’s eye as he was led away, head held high, emotionless.
The jury retired. Donald sighed and took out his pocket-watch. Seven minutes to one. He stood up and glanced at the gallery, at the crowd of spectators. There, behind that woman with the outrageous hat, the grapes and the pineapples and the fiddly blue ribbons – damn it, if he’d had to sit behind her, he would have given her an earful – as she moved, behind her, suddenly he saw Robbie. The boy was wagging again, but for once Donald didn’t mind. He would have done the same himself, had he been in his shoes.
He went out into the breezy blue-eyed day, lit a cigarette and walked from Stout Street into Whitmore, from Ballance into Lambton Quay and back to the main entrance on Stout. He took a piss, then hurried back towards the courtroom.
The jury returned at 1.25 p.m. with its verdict:
‘GUILTY, with a strong recommendation to mercy . . .’
Donald did not hear all the words.
‘. . . not responsible for his actions . . . suffering . . . from a craze . . . his intense hatred . . . mixing of British and alien races.’
The registrar asked Terry if he had anything to say. WAs there any reason why he should not receive the death sentence?
Terry stood very tall and straight, his voice strong and clear. ‘Nothing except to repeat what I said formerly, that my action was a right and justifiable action.’
‘Prisoner Lionel Terry,’ the Chief Justice said, ‘the recommendation of the jury will be duly forwarded to his Excellency, the Governor . . . The sentence of the Court is that you be taken . . . to His Majesty’s prison at Wellington, and thence to the place of execution,’ Donald broke the lead of his pencil on his pad, ‘and there be hanged by the neck till you be dead . . . may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.’
A hush fell on the court. All eyes were directed at Terry, who stood very still, his blue eyes calm.
Donald watched as Terry was led out. He sat in his seat as others leapt up and chatted excitedly. He would wr
ite about his friend – how he’d held the court spellbound by his oratory, how he’d risked all for the honour of his race, how he’d stood clear-eyed and erect, a knight errant lifted from the pages of chivalry.
No Contínents or Seas
Katherine watched helplessly as Robbie lived and breathed Lionel Terry. His father talked through his reports even before he published. ‘What do you think, Robbie? Enough drama for you?’
Robbie wanted to sign the petition that ran throughout the country, but his father said, ‘When you’re older, son, you’ll have your turn.’
Donald tried to get Katherine to sign. It was the only time she remembered him swearing at her. She could feel every movement of her body, the heaviness of her arms, her legs, as she turned her back and walked out of the room. She could feel herself quivering, could feel his eyes burning at the back of her neck. The blackness of his rage, his stunned disbelief.
The petition collected thousands of names, but in the end it wasn’t needed. The Government had already decided: Terry’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Father and son tracked Terry’s progress from Wellington Gaol to Lyttelton, from Lyttelton Gaol to Sunnyside (mental hospital, indeed! – the papers didn’t say lunatic asylum any more), from the madhouse to his escapes into the countryside. Donald and Robbie told each other stories, embellishing them more and more with each telling – why, you’d think he was some modern-day Robin Hood, the way people talked, the way they helped him.
‘Terry’s adventures certainly add spice to the paper,’ Donald said as he poured more whisky. ‘We could run a series of cartoons, Robbie. Terry swimming the Waimakariri. Terry in the abandoned hut at Burnt Hill eating raw vegetables and grasses . . .’
So they weren’t Chinamen’s vegetables, Katherine thought.
They were all sitting in the parlour, Edie reading a book, Katherine mending yet another hole in Robbie’s sock. This one didn’t deserve the name ‘sock’. More a mass of darning held together by wool scrap. Why couldn’t Donald give her more money?
‘How about a cartoon of the man in Oxford giving him his handkerchief and check cap with the caption – Good on you, Terry. Keep up the good work . . .’
Damn. Katherine sucked her finger where she’d pricked it with the needle.
‘We could have Terry lecturing about the alien problem before the crowd at Sheffield . . . Sure they caught him in the end, carted him back to Sunnyside, but you can’t keep a good man down. I hear with his latest escape the Chinks throughout Canterbury locked up their shops and didn’t even work their gardens. Now there’s a good cartoon.’
Katherine sighed. Now she listened as Donald read aloud yet another letter:
My friend,
During my recent excursion I enjoyed a right royal time amongst the mountains and rivers, though the water was a little too cold and I had to indulge in a good run up hill to get what the silly little medicos call the ‘red blood corpuscles’ smiling again. I cannot understand why people choose to live on the stagnant flat when they might as easily live at altitude where the air is pure and life is infinitely more wholesome . . .
The madhouse is thoroughly tiresome. I miss the conversation of intelligent companions, this being the primary motivation for my numerous excursions. Your continued encouragement and strong support are a great comfort to me. Please give my kind wishes to all our mutual friends.
I remain,
Yours as ever,
Lionel Terry.
‘We need to start a petition for Terry’s release, Robbie,’ Donald said. ‘The madhouse is no place for a man of his intellect. It would be enough to send a sane man mad.’ He sat, hands steepled in concentration, Robbie beside him, a mirror image of his father.
As Katherine put away her sewing basket and went to cook dinner she noticed Edie, head raised from The Story of the Earth, quietly observing. Katherine did not need to tell her that women (and girls) of good breeding did not read Donald’s newspaper. Katherine always banished any unattended copy to a pile near the fireplace. Stories of avaricious doctors, filthy foods in restaurants, fallen women all went up in flames.
Nevertheless, Katherine worried. Not only about Donald’s influence but also about Edie’s own eccentricities. Once, in the library, Katherine caught her up on the shelves, fingers wrapped around Gray’s Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. She was seven, for heaven’s sake. All right, almost eight. Did she understand anything of what she read or did she just enjoy the illustrations, the challenge of impossible words? Thank goodness she hadn’t dropped it. Katherine was in no mood for an argument with the librarian. Nor did she fancy having to explain to Donald why they were paying for an expensive damaged book. He’d put on his shirt that morning complaining that even a Chinaman could do a better job of the ironing. As she’d pulled Edie down from the shelf, as she scolded her and slapped her hand, Katherine could hear Donald’s mother calling from the grave, her voice like a noose round her throat. Such stubbornness in a girl, she was saying, such peculiarity! Beat it out of her now, Donald, before it’s too late. What man will have her if you don’t nip it in the bud? How can this not lead to unhappiness?
Alone in the kitchen, Katherine sliced the top from an onion, stared at its translucent creamy-green rings. She could see a tree stump – the end of life, all the rings of its history. She was throwing a stone, watching the ripples of water.
It was easier not to think. Or feel. Perhaps intelligence was not a blessing. More a test of character.
She saw her daughter’s face, the long curls of red hair, a scattering of freckles over her upturned nose, her big hazel eyes. She sliced the bottom from the onion and her eyes watered. Once she’d looked like that too. Like her daughter.
She peeled the skin, held the naked onion in her hand. For a moment she saw a lopped-off globe with no continents or seas, a world that had lost its shape. And all its boundaries.
Rísíng to the Surface
In the early hours of Monday morning – that time of the day and week when sleep is deepest and life is at its most vulnerable – Katherine woke, then, stretching across the cold white sheets, fell immediately back into sleep. Later that morning, as she heated the copper, a constable came to see her, told her Donald had been drunk when he fell into the water.
Katherine did not stop to cry. She thanked the constable and waved him away, sent the children to school with apples, a bagful of biscuits. She added two tablespoons of kerosene to the copper, let the bedclothes boil in yellow-soaped water.
All day she scrubbed the skin from her knuckles, pulling linen, frocks, seven white shirts through the mangle and into blued water. The rain came down as Katherine pegged the last of the wash on the line. Inside she watched the slanting cuts of water, five pairs of trousers – brown, blue, black – blown full of cold air.
Every evening he came home with the Post, devouring it with whisky and half a pack of cigarettes before dinner. A pack of wowsers, he’d say, as he mocked the Women’s Christian Temperance Union or the three women who’d just crossed the Southern Alps by the Copland Pass. ‘If Misses Perkins and Barnicoat spent more time developing their womanly arts, then perhaps they’d find husbands. As for Mr Thomson—’ Donald roared with laughter. ‘How the devil did he snare a wife like that?’
Katherine watched a column of ash fall from his shaking hand. Let the house burn, she thought, but she walked into curling white smoke and stubbed it out with her shoe.
Afterwards as he sat at the table, hands and the cuffs of his sleeves still smudged with ink from the paper, Donald expounded the victories of his day. The latest in a war of words. As Katherine served sago and stewed apple or banana, he smiled, gave Robbie a wink. Pulled a word he’d rehearsed out of the print of his mind. ‘Robbie, spell me: enatant.’
Robbie gazed up out of the corner of his eye, as if to catch the black letters as they swept by. ‘E,’ he said, ‘E-N-A—’
Donald filled in the blanks, overwriting the incorrect letters. ‘S
o what does it mean, son?’
Robbie thought for a while, a flurry of questions creasing his brow. ‘Something that’s very hard, Father.’
Donald laughed, praising his son for an excellent answer. Then looked at Edie.
Edie wrapped the white tablecloth round her fingers. Her lower lip quivered, her lips parted slightly, as if a word, or perhaps just an expectation of a word, might slip from her tongue and tumble into the unsuspecting hands of her father. And yet she said nothing, only looked into the face of her mother.
Katherine could not bear to see herself in her daughter. She gazed out the window at a small piece of sky – a piece of blue-grey fabric sewn over and over as if to cover a hole. She hesitated. Turned to see Donald laughing furiously. What had she said? What do you say over and over when no one hears you?
Now Katherine watched his empty clothes on the line. He was not coming home. She did not have to conjure up the meaning of words – his words; watch as he listened and laughed at her. Or tell anyone who asked that he was a newspaperman, neglecting to mention Truth. She did not have to find Robbie, on Saturday afternoons, reading the sex scandals passed down from the hands of his father. She gazed at Donald’s chair, closed her eyes. What would she tell the children?
*
That night Katherine lay on the left side of the bed, feeling the space beside her. Robbie had stopped sobbing. Only the rattle of a tram as it slid down the tracks of Riddiford Street, the thud and wheel of a horse-cart, a drunk’s thick call as he passed on his way from the Caledonian, the Tramways, some godforsaken hotel.
She woke sprawled across the double bed, filling Donald’s absence with her own body. Breathing in the freshly starched sheets, two fat pillows squashed beneath her. Nothing left of him, nothing conjugal. She turned, her face brushing his pillow. Even now with its new white slip, a faintly familiar smell. His smell.
He would come with the closing of her eyes – a rough groping and thrusting of body parts. Rolling off into sleep, leaving her wet, suddenly cold with his sweat. The first night she’d lain in the dark, her face startled like a silent oh. Later she learned to press her mind into a thin black line. She’d tell him her period had come – two and a half weeks out of four. Or perhaps she was pregnant – surely he didn’t want her to miscarry.
